1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a process for optimizing the effectiveness of a hypertext document or content variable (hereinafter, "hypertext element"), and, more particularly, to a process for analyzing specific hypertext elements of a document in Hyper Text Mark-up Language (HTML), either static or dynamic, which automatically redirects links to the hypertext elements to a plurality of alternate hypertext elements configured in effective parallel paths (i.e. rotated between alternative elements) according to a predetermined distribution function in order to analyze the manner in which visitors to a web site respond to links to each of the alternate hypertext elements so that the most effective alternate can be determined in order to improve the overall effectiveness of the hypertext element.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The worldwide web is becoming an increasingly popular means for communication over the Internet. Home pages, or web sites, are used for various purposes, including advertising and selling products. Such web sites or home pages are formed from hypertext documents created by Hyper Text Mark-up Language (HTML). In their simplest form, hypertext documents can be a page of text with certain words or phrases, known as hyperlinks or links, highlighted, for example, by underlining or the use of different colors, or both. When a visitor to the web site clicks a mouse pointer on a hyperlink, control is transferred to a different hypertext document to which the hyperlink is connected in order to enable the visitor to the web site to browse through a continuing series of documents or document pages of interest. Hypertext documents are not limited to text documents, but can also be complex multimedia documents which contain graphics, pictures, sound or video objects or other hot spots. A hot spot is a general term for the various places or locations on the document page that are linked to another document or which trigger an audio or video clip or some other action. Graphics and pictures are inserted into hypertext documents in the same way that a word or phrase is linked between documents as discussed above. A sound or video object, in the form of a recording of a sound or video, can be electronically inserted into the document, denoted by a label or icon, which appears as a hyperlink. When a mouse pointer is clicked on the icon, rather than being transferred to a new document or document page, a sound or video clip is played in a small window that automatically opens up in the document.
Both static or dynamic web sites are known. Static web sites are simply static files that are used to create a home page on demand. Dynamic web sites are created on the fly generally from information stored in a database or by other methods which generate web pages and content in real time according to the behavior and known characteristics of the user.
The web sites, also known as home pages, may be created from various word processing documents spread sheets, presentation packages and the like using available application programs which convert the word processing documents into hypertext documents compatible with HTML. Microsoft's "FRONT PAGE" software is an example of available software for creating web sites.
Hundreds and even thousands of web sites can be run by a web server. Each of the web sites may consist of any number of web pages and/or can even consist of a single hypertext document and one or more succeeding linked documents. The cost for maintaining a web site on a particular web server is based on various factors including: the particular disk storage space for the web site and/or web page, computer processing requirements, costs associated with designing and constructing pages in the web sites, costs of technical maintenance of the web site and the required hardware and software, costs to purchase the required hardware and software to operate the web site and other costs associated with building and operating the web site.
Each web site may have one or more objectives. In order for the web site to be successful, the objectives of the web site and/or web pages within the web site must be fulfilled. Various objectives are known for such web sites, including: acquiring visitor profiles or registrations and/or other information; downloading or distributing software; displaying text and graphics; selling products and services; distributing information, as well as advertising. A measure of the effectiveness of a web site can be determined by the number of compliances with the objective. As used herein, compliance is defined as the successful achievement of the desired behavior, whether it be purchasing products or services or downloading information or any of the other objectives mentioned above or any other outcome which the website is intended to produce among visitors. Since each access to a web site and succeeding hypertext document is logged by the web server, the success or compliance with the business objective can be measured by analyzing the server log file maintained by the web server or through other measurement methods whereby the visitor's compliance with the intention of the website can be assessed, including externally collected survey information.
An exemplary map of a web site or home page is illustrated in FIG. 1. The home page is illustrated to the left, with links to various other hypertext documents moving from left to right. In order to simplify the discussion, as well as the illustration, the server is shown with a single hypertext home page and assumes only one source of entry for each hypertext document. However, as will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art, the discussion equally follows to more complex structures.
As shown in FIG. 1, the exemplary home page is linked to four hypertext documents A, B, C and D. Each of the hypertext documents A, B, C and D contain successive links to other hypertext documents as well as a link to another web site, as indicated by the hyperlinks E and X, which represent advertising links from a particular web site to another web site. The hypertext document T represents the page where the product is sold. Thus, with respect to the exemplary map illustrated in FIG. 1, access to the hypertext documents E, T and X may represent compliances with the business objectives. The other hypertext documents or pages may contribute to the web site as a whole, but do not directly fulfill the business objective for the web site.
Compliance generally requires two things: First, a visitor must actually visit a web page, called the target page, where the visitor is provided with the opportunity to perform the compliance. Second, the compliance must be executed (i.e. the desired action must be performed). See the following examples:
Example 1
The objective of the web site is to sell merchandise. The compliance is that the visitor orders merchandise. In order to do this, the visitor must visit the page on the site where orders are submitted, or the target page.
Example 2
The objective of the website is to inform visitors of the health benefits for a particular cereal and distribute coupons for that cereal. The compliance is that the visitor reads or downloads the information and coupons from the target page or pages which contain it.
Example 3
The objective of the website is to acquire consumer profiles through registrations. The compliance is that the visitor registers the appropriate information with the vendor, and the target page is where the registration form is located.
Various factors affect whether the visitors to the home page choose to pass through the various links to the hypertext documents E, T and X, which, as discussed above, represent compliances with the business objective. Examples of such factors include: speed at which the home page downloads; the graphical design and aesthetics of the home page; the creative positioning and strategy of the home page; the material and information content of the home page; the specific nature and location of the hot links on the home page; the speed at which the linked pages download; the graphical design and esthetics of the link pages; the creative positioning and strategy of the linked pages; the material and information content of the linked pages; the specific nature and location of the hot links on the linked pages, as well as the pricing, promotional and advertising information regarding the vendor's products. There are various trade-offs in the factors identified above. For example, more complex graphics may take relatively longer to download, but may be more aesthetically pleasing to the visitor. The download time for each of the hyperlink documents has a definite effect on the attrition rate at each of the links.
FIG. 2 represents an exemplary number of accesses to successive links from the home page, assuming 100 visitors initially visited the home page. As shown, for every 100 visitors to the home page, only 70 move on, for an attrition rate of 30%. Of the 70, only 9 comply with the particular business objectives of the site [i.e., 4 move on to link E, while 5 move on to page T for a total of a nine percent success rate for every 100 visitors to the home page.
As can be seen from the above example, the number of compliances relates directly to the return on investment. Since the proprietor of the home page pays according to the amount of disk space and other costs associated with the creation, operation and maintenance of the web server, the return on investment for this cost can be improved by improving the number and/or percentage of compliances.